


why friends don't let friends attend horse sales alone

by fascinationex



Series: the TF Equestrian AU [2]
Category: Transformers - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - Crack, Alternate Universe - Equestrian, Equestrian, Gen, Horses, Humanformers, horseformers, in which orion meets skyfire and would die for him within five minutes, that's a thing now
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-27
Updated: 2020-09-27
Packaged: 2021-03-08 00:07:44
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,396
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26676421
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fascinationex/pseuds/fascinationex
Summary: Orion goes to sale barns with friends to gently ask questions like, "So could you tell us why this horse is for sale, actually?" when they think they've found The One and promptly lose their minds, as horse people sometimes do.Or: how Orion met Skyfire.
Relationships: Optimus Prime & Ratchet, Optimus Prime & Skyfire
Series: the TF Equestrian AU [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1941025
Comments: 26
Kudos: 97





	why friends don't let friends attend horse sales alone

**Author's Note:**

> \- fictional horse circumstances only  
> \- occurs before the first story "A Horse Named Starscream"  
> \- v soft content ahead  
> \- still lowkey blaming AO3 user neveralarch

Orion visits sale barns as a matter of course, and only very rarely because he's actually looking to buy a horse personally. He goes to see what's on offer—what kinds of animals are available, what prices they're going for. He also goes because he likes horses and wants to be allowed to pet as many as possible, obviously. 

Lastly, Orion goes to sale barns with friends to gently ask questions like, "So could you tell us why this horse is for sale, actually?" when they think they've found The One and promptly lose their minds, as horse people sometimes do. Everyone needs a steadying hand on the reins sometimes—especially when they go to look at lovely animals who may yet be incredibly unsuitable.

Friends don't let friends attend horse sales on their own.

In theory, Ratchet is here to look at yet another tiny, mean pony to add to his growing herd of tiny, mean ponies, but Orion has lost him somewhere. He's not too worried—Ratchet is, himself, a large animal veterinarian, and has a natural glowering suspicion of all horse sellers.

Now he's all alone, wandering. There are plenty of people travelling in little knots, all in jeans or jodhpurs, anoraks and boots like a uniform. The distant overhead lights give everything a vaguely surreal feeling. The whole world smells of hay and manure, of mud, rain and leather. Outside, there are half-hearted corrals, all ancient wooden posts strung with rope, looking faintly dismal in the drizzle.

One of the horses stands out mostly just due to his sheer size. He must be eighteen hands at least—he is huge—but there are other tall horses here: the impression of enormity is because he's some kind of draught horse breed, and his neck is thicker with muscle than some horse's rumps. The bulk of him is covered by an enormous blanket, and his thick, sturdy legs are still carefully wrapped from travel.

The overall impression is one of enormous bulk and power.

Despite the people and the new horses and the noise, he is apparently dozing: his huge head down, ears loose, resting one back hoof. 

Orion drifts closer. His name plate says "Skyfire". His ears twitch at Orion's approach and he raises his head half an inch. He has a long forelock and huge brown eyes. The placement of them makes him look slightly concerned. It is a very endearing face. 

"What're you worried about, hm?" Orion asks him. Skyfire's ear twitches towards him responsively. He blinks slowly.

There's nobody around looking after him at this very second, but he has water and clearly whoever trailered him cared enough to wrap his legs so he didn't hurt himself on the journey. 

...he and Orion are friends within about three minutes.

Orion is so busy petting him that he misses his phone buzzing in his pocket, and jumps when Ratchet materialises, apparently out of the ether, at his left shoulder. 

"Is _this_ where you've been?"

Skyfire doesn't even twitch when Orion jumps. He flicks an ear and turns his head a little to get a good look at Ratchet, but the second he's done that, he's back to nosing at Orion for more scratches. 

Ratchet is middle aged, and has been middle aged for as long as Orion has known him, which is since he was twenty-five and Orion was fifteen. One might presume it hard to be middle aged at twenty-five, but sometimes age is all about what you project. Twenty years later, Ratchet's greying around the edges, broad through the shoulders and slowly growing a little softer round the middle, and still aggressively middle aged. His eyes are grey, and razor sharp.

He looks at Skyfire and makes a grumpy noise. "Too calm. He's probably sedated."

Orion hums thoughtfully. Sometimes at sale events, unscrupulous sellers will sedate animals to give the appearance of a steady temper. But Ratchet is a very suspicious person, too.

"He's not sedated," says someone Orion assumes to be the seller, a tall and pencil-thin man, striding closer. He lays a hand on the big animal's side as he approaches, and Skyfire just flicks an ear. "Plenty wrong with this one, but not his temper, or his manners—he's as docile as they come, even for a draught horse. Good with kids, good with animals. Other horses, dogs, cats, goats, you name it. Good for the vet, trailer is fine, good for the farrier, no biting, no kicking, no bolting, no rearing."

He seems as though he'd like to go on, and Orion smiles at his determination to make a sale—even though he has no intention of buying, of course. 

But Ratchet interrupts him before the man can, presumably, tell them about the time when Skyfire singlehandedly saved kittens from a burning building:

"I notice the conspicuous absence of 'no bucking' and 'no stable vices' from that list," he drawls.

"Ah, well. No stable vices. But bucking isn't such a problem... because he's pasture sound only. What they call 'unsuitable for riding due to previous injury'. Shame, too. He's only ten."

Oh. Orion rubs Skyfire's neck sympathetically. His large eye seems so gentle and soft, its brown depths filled with what is frankly an impossible earnestness. He blinks slowly. 

"Poor old fellow," Orion murmurs. Ten isn't really old, but these huge draught breeds rarely live much past twenty. Especially not if they have existing health problems. 

The huge horse turns his equally giant head towards Orion and sighs softly, a warm rush of breath across Orion's arm. Aww.

Ratchet makes a faintly disgusted noise, either at Optimus's evident weakness for Skyfire's huge dark eyes or at the news that he is unrideable.

"What injury?"

"Are you the owner?" Orion asks, almost simultaneously, rubbing the flat of his face gently. 

Tellingly—perhaps because he knows where the weakness is, and wants to make his sale—he answers Orion's question and not Ratchet's. "No, we stable him—but I'm an authorised seller on the owner's behalf. He'd make someone a fine companion," he adds, clapping Skyfire on his big shoulder. "Two fifty for him." 

Two fifty is cheap, even for a 'useless' companion horse—but of course Orion has never looked at a horse and thought "useless," even though he does occasionally think "nobody in the world would buy that animal," or perhaps, "the poor thing."

His pasture has only Huffer in it right now. The ill-tempered dressage horse is eighteen now, and has been tiring much more easily and working with much less enthusiasm for the last year or more. It's been a hard decision, but Orion will no longer compete with him, and intends to keep him as a companion for whichever horse he eventually decides on as a competition mount. 

Huffer certainly acts like he doesn't mind solitude in the meantime, but horses are herd animals, and Orion has suspicions. 

"Is the owner available?" Orion wonders.

"Ah," says the man delicately. "The owner has had less and less time for him after his incomplete recovery. It's more important to have him sold off."

Without an invested party ensuring he goes to a good home, and at only two fifty, Skyfire could easily be bought for, well, his... parts. The meat and the hide and the hooves.

Orion peers at Skyfire again. 

"What injury?" Ratchet asks again, louder and harsher. Across the aisle, a woman turns away from a stalled pony to glance at them.

The seller gets an annoyed look at this persistent questioning. "Fractured pastern," he says shortly. 

Orion immediately glances down at Skyfire's legs, but he can't see the difference in any of them. That doesn't mean it's not there. Broken leg bones are always a very big deal.

"He's as recovered as he's ever going to get. Doesn't cause him pain." Now the man sounds defensive.

A horse is, well, up to a tonne of weight balanced on four toothpicks, and they don't even have any muscle in their lower legs to stabilise an injury. Skyfire's heavier than most.

"Right, well, we have to be going, so—" Ratchet begins, probably very wisely, but Orion interrupts him.

"Do you have his medical records?" Orion pushes.

"Yes, everything."

Ratchet heaves on his elbow so hard that Orion has no choice but to follow him a few feet away. 

"Orion, are you out of your mind? You want to buy a horse you can't do anything with? Who is probably going to need extra medical care until he dies?"

Orion frowns. "He'd still be 'doing' something, he'd be keeping Huffer company."

"A companion horse for your companion horse, very compelling argument," Ratchet says scathingly.

He's silent for a long moment, and then he glances over at Skyfire again. 

_But he's so nice_ , Orion thinks. He doesn't say it, because it sounds plaintive and childish and silly. But he _is_ nice, and Orion really wants to take him home and take care of him, both because it's innately rewarding and also so nobody else buys him and hurts him. His heart squeezes in his chest at the very thought.

He looks back at Ratchet to find his friend has raised his eyes to the ceiling, as though asking a deity he doesn't believe in for strength.

But Ratchet, for all he is suspicious and bad tempered, is also at least as soft hearted as Orion. It must be exhausting to have both such good sense and such an overabundance of care. 

"Let me check him over," he grumbles.

"Okay."

"And spend some time with him. Trot him up, and we'll see how bad it is. And if his temper's really that even." 

"Okay." 

"And then think about how much a horse that size is going to eat," he adds.

"You won't have to pay for it, old friend," Orion says gently.

"No, but I'll be coming out and treating him in the middle of the night when he gets sick, won't I," mutters Ratchet. 

Orion has nothing to say to this—Ratchet will, of course. He is a good vet, and the only one Orion even knows who will drive out at two in the morning to treat an animal with a toothache. Little wonder he's always grumpy.

Contrary to Orion's expectation, the seller seems delighted to learn that they actually want to examine Skyfire. 

With his blanket off, it becomes clear that he's a grey, and the solid white of his coat makes him seem somehow even bigger. Ratchet is only just under six foot, but he looks small next to Skyfire's huge bulk. The horse is exactly as tolerant as the seller promises he'll be: he stands still, the only symptoms of alertness his ears moving with the ambient sounds and the occasional twitch of his tail at a fly. He is patient while his teeth are checked, lifts his hooves when asked, and only once noses at Ratchet like he would really prefer to know exactly what he's doing.

However... the lameness is, as promised, evident. Skyfire walks fine, and responds to Orion's aids quickly and willingly, but the second he pushes him into a trot, he can see the ugly way his head jerks up with every step on the front left, trying to counterbalance the weight of the stride. The expected one-two, one-two heartbeat pace of a trot is all wrong. Orion could have picked it with his eyes closed, just listening. 

Orion doesn't even run him the whole length of the aisle. He feels bad asking for it, event though there's not much evidence that Skyfire's in pain. 

"Whoa," he says. Skyfire drops back to a walk.

Ratchet looks unhappy. 

"I told you," shrugs the seller helplessly. "You think I'd be asking two fifty if he was sound?" 

"You'll be lucky to get twenty five for him," Ratchet drawls, to the seller's evident irritation. 

This is cruel but true, and also what Orion's afraid of. Skyfire noses his shoulder—because Skyfire's head, at rest, is pretty much at Orion's shoulder. Ratchet's right. Feeding him is going to be expensive, especially over winter... which isn't impacting Orion's determination to take him home.

Ratchet tells the seller they'll think about it and be back, and then suffers the indignity of dragging Orion away from Skyfire. 

_Oh, he's going to need such a huge rug_ , he reflects, quite brainlessly, glancing over his shoulder at the horse. Skyfire's so _big_. And so friendly. And also sort of sad. 

He clearly needs someone to take care of him. And not to be dramatic or anything, but Orion loves him and would die for him. 

"You'd be mad to buy him," Ratchet says.

"Do you think it's going to get worse?"

"Worse? It's hard to say, which is the point: he could be walking pain-free for years, or you might have to euthanise him in eighteen months. I know you, you'll get attached—"

"Of course," Orion says, because, well, _obviously_.

This, of all things, causes Ratchet to fall silent.

Besides, Ratchet's one to talk. Orion has met both his tiny pony who nobody wanted and also his giant dog who nobody wanted. 

They walk in silence, and stop only to lean on the wall near a tiny corral and watch someone lungeing a short piebald horse. It doesn't pay much attention to the man holding the line, and throws its head instead of slowing as directed.

"I'm not going to talk you out of buying him, am I?" Ratchet sighs finally.

Orion reflects for a moment. 

Everything Ratchet says is true. And if Skyfire can't walk in eighteen months and Orion sinks a stupid amount of money into him and then has to put him down... that's eighteen months away. Eighteen months might be a long time to a horse, who is likely to live only twenty years. Depending on what you do with it.

"No."

There's a long, judgmental pause. 

"At least you're honest," Ratchet mutters.

Orion leans into him a little, enough to feel his warmth through his sleeve. 

"If you pay two fifty for that animal," Ratchet starts. The tone of his voice is a dire warning.

Orion laughs softly. Skyfire really isn't worth two fifty. Orion'll pay it if he has to, but he'll be properly embarrassed.

"Come on, let's go see if we can get him down to a hundred."

**Author's Note:**

> is horse au my thing now
> 
> leave me a comment if you liked something and you feel like it :)


End file.
